...they kneel together before the Dauphin (III. ¡.308-10) they do so to plead for opposite decisions. In a well-ordered patriarchal world, women are silent...reduced to the status of names in history books, and the mothers survive on Shakespeare's stage to dispute the fathers' wills and threaten their patriarchal...

...women are silent or invisible. First as daughters, then as wives, they are subject to male control, and men speak and act on their behalf. But in King John,...reduced to the status of names in history books, and the mothers survive on Shakespeare's stage to dispute the fathers' wills and threaten their patriarchal...

...As Phyllis Rackin notes, "In a well-ordered patriarchal world, women are silent or invisible. . . . But in King John, the fathers and husbands are dead,...the fathers' wills and threaten their patriarchal legacies."100 These dangerous widows are able to make virtual pawns of their sons by the knowledge...